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Use the light that is in you to recover your natural clearness of sight.
God’s divinity comes of my humility, and this may be demonstrated as follows. It is God’s peculiar property to give; but He cannot give unless something is prepared to receive his gifts. If, then, I prepare my humility to receive what He gives, by my humility I make God a giver. Since it is His nature to give, I am merely giving God what is already His own.
It is like a rich man who wants to be a giver but must first find a taker, since without a taker he cannot be a giver. Similarly, if God is to be a giver, He must first find a taker, but no one may be a taker of God’s gifts except by his humility. Therefore, if God is to exercise his divine property by his gifts, He well may need my humility; for apart from humility He can give me nothing — without it I am not prepared to receive His gift. That is why it is true that by humility I give divinity to God.
The divine and conceptual scriptures are compared with dew, with water, with milk, with wine, and with honey, for they have the power like water to produce life, like milk to give growth, like vine to revive, like honey both to purify and preserve.
It is not enough to speak, but to speak true.
He destroys his health by the pains he takes to preserve it.
The wall of the Paradise in which Thou, Lord, dwellest, is built of contradictories, nor is there any way to enter but for one who has overcome the highest Spirit of Reason who guards its gate.
The wish to be cured is part of the cure.
It is not a man’s duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support.
Ceremony was but devised at first
To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes,
Recanting goodness, sorry ere ’tis shown;
But where there is true friendship, there needs none.
Better than worshipping gods is obedience to the laws of righteousness.
Give them bread and circuses, and they will never revolt.
He to whom time is like eternity, and eternity like time, is free.
God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide. Him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him. “To the persevering mortal,” said Zoroaster, “the blessed Immortals are swift.”
A new principle is an inexhaustible source of new views.
But often in the world’s most crowded streets, but often, in the din of strife, there rises an unspeakable desire after the knowledge of our buried life, a thirst to spend our fire and restless force in tracking out our true, original course; a longing to inquire into the mystery of this heart that beats so wild, so deep in us, to know whence our thoughts come and where they go.
I have often found a small stream at its source, that, when followed along its course, carried away the camel with its load.
Pleasure can be supported by illusion, while happiness rests upon truth.
Go sweep out the chamber of your heart.
Make it ready to be the dwelling place of the Beloved.
When you depart out,
He will enter it.
In you,
void of yourself,
will He display His beauties.
All things good come to those for whom the Good is all things.
